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Will Your New AV Room be Designed with Ease®?
Boardrooms, multipurpose rooms, auditoriums, and training rooms - almost all presentation facilities need good audio systems to function properly. Yet the rooms themselves and their sound systems come in many different "flavors." Rooms can have a variety of surfaces, sizes, finishes and configurations, all of which affect the quality and performance of sound systems. At the same time, one must consider the type of sound to be presented. Is it program audio from TV or movies, speech from a podium, audio or video teleconferencing or music? Each will behave differently in a given acoustical environment and a room that is optimized for speech, for example, may not work for music.
Add to this problem the growing demand to get maximum utility out of expensive presentation facilities by adapting them to multiple uses and configurations and it is easy to understand the dilemma faced by the owner, architect and AV designer. How can cost, flexibility and audio performance be evaluated and balanced early in the design process before the project budget is spent on something that may not meet the client expectations?
Fortunately, there are some new tools available to AV designers that can help. One is the new generation of audio matrix switchers. These devices can control, shape and equalize the audio and feed it at the appropriate levels to the right combination of speakers for a given room configuration and audio source. These new systems can even have ambient noise sensing and active feedback cancellation for real time adaptive control of the audio. The systems can be set up with a laptop computer. Once set up, the optimal configuration for any required function can be selected with the touch of a button.
Even with the enhanced capability of modern AV systems, there is still a strong desire to know, with confidence how the system will perform before the facility is actually built. This is especially true when design and value-engineering options are being considered. How will these changes to the acoustical environment affect the performance of the facility?
EASE® - Enhanced Acoustic Simulator for Engineers offers answers to these questions. This very sophisticated simulation software was developed over a period of many years by the firm Acoustical Design Ahnert in Berlin. It can model complex rooms and facilities in three dimensions. In addition to the volume and shape of the space, it takes into account the acoustical properties of all the surfaces, the height of the listening plane, the electrical characteristics of the loudspeakers, ambient noise in the space and many other factors.
Once an EASE® model is set up, different types and combinations of speakers, speaker placement, orientation, cluster configurations and power settings can be tested. EASE® can also test the effects of variations in room configuration and surface materials. The results are then evaluated and adjustments made to achieve the desired audio performance.
EASE® software can map a number of graphic and numerical performance measurements, but the most commonly used are Direct Sound Pressure Level (SPL), Total Sound Pressure Level (Σ), Clarity (C80) and Articulation Loss (AL). (Even these measurements have a number of sub-categories for more refined investigations, but these are not always needed for the typical design). SPL is an overall measurement of quality and gives an idea of how uniformly the sound covers the desired listening plane(s). Ó factors in the effect of reflection and reverberation in the space and shows the total sound arriving at the listening plane. C80 measures how music (including several different types of music) will be perceived and AL measures speech intelligibility. It essentially measures the percentage of consonants "lost" at the listening plane. The following table a general guideline for "good" audio performance in a typical space.
If the purpose of the system were only voice announcements (a PA system), AL would be the measure of most concern. In a multipurpose space, the design might require several iterations to find the best balance among all the factors.
 
EASE® can provide graphical outputs and it can be used interactively. In the interactive mode, it is possible to mouse over selected locations in the listening plane and see the actual SPL, Σ, C80 or AL levels at any location. A really powerful feature of EASE® is the ability of the designer (via headphones) to actually hear how speech or music will sound at any location. With a properly set up model, the aural simulation is uncannily accurate, with all the reverberation, background noise and other effects the listener will hear in the actual facility.
The introduction of EASE® modeling is part of our commitment to provide clients with the most cost-effective and best performing facilities available. EASE® modeling can be beneficial in the design of:
For additional Information about how EASE® can benefit your next project, please contact us at:
AKF Technologies LLC
1501 Broadway, Suite 700 New York, NY 10036 Phone: 212.354.5656 Fax: 212.354.5668 www.akftechnologies.com | ||||||||||||||||||||
